Writer Websites: Things to Avoid

Broken links. Nothing will make a visitor flee faster than broken links or incomplete pages.

Disorganization. Do not confuse your visitor. Ever. Think long and hard about how you want to organize your website and take your time with it, because visitors do not want to have to think to navigate your site. They want to find what they're looking for immediately.

Convoluted web address. I'm not saying you must have a domain Or Else, but I do recommend that you avoid urls that are more than 20 characters long. Although, if you can, it really is a good idea to invest in a domain name. Mine is around $120 per year. It's a good deal.

Lack of updates. Visitors only come back if you put out fresh content.

Music. Don't have music or video auto-playing on your page. It annoys people who like to listen to their own music while surfing, and it makes your website longer to load.

Animations. Things that move draw the eye and distract from your content. This is bad. If you must share it, then email it as an attachment to friends and family -- people who have to love you no matter what you do.

Advertising. Unless you have a free host and can't help it, avoid flashy advertising. It's UGLY. If you must advertise, try to be modest and discrete. The most discrete I've seen is Google AdSense, but Amazon Associates can be discrete if you put the links in yourself.

Links to other sites. You might not think this is a bad thing, but having links to other sites encourages people to go to other sites. And I know it's good manners to link people sometimes, but . . . well, you want visitors to stay. And it's okay to not link everyone you know or like. That's what bookmarks are for. (I, for example, started a button rotation on my old personal site so that people would stop asking me to link to them.)

Busy backgrounds. Some sites use really bright, colorful pictures as backgrounds because they're pretty. This is a horrible idea because then visitors can't read the text. Make sure your background does not obscure your words. Your words make the site.

Non-uniform text. Keep your text around the size of a 12-point font -- never make headers taller than the width of an index finger (or as high as 2 lines of 12-point font). People prefer arial, helvetica, century gothic, and sans serif fonts. Avoid text that is in any way moving (blinking, scrolling, etc) or brightly colored (only use dark text for light backgrounds and light text for dark backgrounds). Also, it's a good idea to use paragraph breaks (like me) instead of indentions (like when you're writing in a word processor) when starting a new paragraph. I used indentions on websites when I was 16, and people asked me to change because the text was too cramped.

Vague site purpose. The first paragraph on your home page should explain what your site is about. It's like a sales pitch. Capture the visitor's attention.

Long-winded. You may be writing a novel, but don't make your visitor feel like they're reading one--unless you actually have posted a novel.

Bright colors. No lime green or fuscia or puce. Colors high in intensity hurt peoples' eyes. Err on the side of caution and go for muted colors.

Too-large images. I know that this is often the fault of not having an image-editing program. But that's no excuse -- Pixlr is a free online image editing resource. The final image quality isn't as good as a traditional program but it gets the job done and low quality images are a lot less annoying than oversized ones. (Also avoid images that don't apply to your site or are too distracting. Don't put too many images on one page, and never have images that take up as much space as your text.)

Forums. While it would be super-duper-awesome to have your fan community come to you, it is also a lot of work to manage anything interactive. I read an article where an author put together a huge community on her website and it did not increase her sales one iota. It just took a massive amount of work to maintain. So consider carefully before you give into the impulse to provide a chat spot for your fans -- in my opinion, it's better for them and you if you use that time to write. And, hey, you can always join the communities they set up. Applaud their effort by showing up and validating something they've worked hard on.